Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In February 2009 the company entered into an agreement with Fexco to acquire 100% of its shares for $ 159.9 million. In 1864, fearing the laying of long underwater lines, Western Union offered to carry out laying of telegraph lines to Europe through the Russian Alaska under the narrow Bering Strait and then to Siberia with branching in the major cities of Europe. Thanks to cooperation with Western Union the Associated Press at the end of the XIX century took almost monopolistic position in the U.S. market news. Western Union made so that the time in all of American civil services was the same. Sibley, the founder of Western Union, did not build a new telegraph lines, and persuaded the other players to join. American Telegraph Company, however, still had to buy it.